Dawn Breaks and Where Do I Stand?
by MadhouseMaddi
Summary: To save everyone he loves, Stiles fights the nogitsune in the dreamlike Purgatory of his mind. (Inspiration and parallels from Dante's Inferno, slight AU)


Dawn Breaks and Where Do I Stand?

* * *

I just might be losing my mind.

Dawn breaks and where do I stand?

Between waking dreams and lost time,

Grasping at visions, slipping like sand,

Gasping for breath to call mine,

This is not what I had planned.

(-MB)

* * *

Stiles claws his way into consciousness, weak like an infant and scared like one, too. The dark silence frowns down upon him from the high, vaulted ceiling of the dreary cellar, offering no condolences to his predicament and providing only solitary drips of water whose distinct _pip plop_ promises to drive the poor injured teen mad. His entire body is fuzzy with a blistering pain, like a sunburn treated with fertilizer. At the edges of his vision hovers a dense, unrelenting fog, so ravenous that Stiles fears closing his eyes again, even for a second, because the fog might decide he's a fit feast for its starving vapor.

"This is just great!" He moans. "_Of course_ I had to be kidnapped today, because I had absolutely nothing better to do! There are definitely not mounds of homework waiting with my name on it at home. Oh, and all that nogitsune business can totally wait!" If his captors heard his rant, none appear from the shadows to reproach him. He continues to yell himself horse.

"Fine. I'll just wait here, then. This obviously can't get any worse."

He half expects a cartoon raincloud to materialize over his head and contradict him, but the air remains still and inanimate, and Stiles remains on the floor, spread eagle on his back in the standing water. The presence of a raincloud wouldn't have made a difference; he's already soaking wet. He huffs, annoyed, and stuggles to his feet, fighting the subzero air of the basement with the vigorous rubbing of his arms and some colorful swears. Maybe he'll get pneumonia and die. He feels horrible enough already, the three inches of water covering the floor seeping into his bones through his shoes. He paces.

Scott probably doesn't even know he's missing yet; Stiles checks his pockets hopefully, but his captors took his phone. Why bother, the basement is likely a dead zone? He tries not to think of 'dead zone' with a metaphorical mindset.

As his eyes adjust a little more, he begins to see outlines of crates and notes that the basement's grungy light beams in through a rectangular window about twenty feet up the brick wall opposite him. There are two castle worthy doors, one blocked by a massive and slightly creepy wolf statue and the other undoubtedly locked from the outside. Stiles immediately considers all his options. Maybe he could stack the crates and reach the window? He sloshes through the muck on the floor and throws himself wholeheartedly against one of them, but the thing must weigh a million pounds because it doesn't even budge. Not for the first time, he curses his lack of werewolf super strength.

"Stiles Stilinski?" A gruff voice echoes from the darkest corner of the cellar, and a fresh wave of goose bumps pepper his skin.

"Who's there? What do you want?" He fires back, the water tripping him as he whirls around, scanning the walls for a weapon and instead locating the person to whom the tired voice belonged, the archaic shackles on his wrists the only thing preventing the man from planting his face into the murky water.

"This is all very Renaissance, innit?" the man says in a vaguely European accent, "I'm Virgil. I'd shake your hand but I'm a little busy hanging around at the moment."

Stiles creeps closer. Virgil appears to be no older than thirty, his lengthy golden hair darkened with mud and a bowtie undone around his neck. If stubble could grow artfully, it grew artfully on this man. "I wonder where they keep the torture devices? Or maybe they've sent you to torture me with silence. I know you can talk Stiles, speak up."

"How do you know me?" Stiles says, interrogatively, but Virgil ignores his bravado.

"I know everything about you, Stilinski."

Like a codfish, the teen tries to sort out all the questions in his head into intelligent conversation. "That makes me feel totally relaxed, thank you for that. Anyway,do you know why I'm here, or how I got here? Knowing that would be fantastic."

Virgil seems reluctant to answer. "I've been imprisoned for two days, and unfortunately, I was asleep when he brought you in. I can't tell you anything. Next question."

"Who's keeping me locked up like this? King Arthur? Do you think he knows he has a problem with his plumbing?"

Virgil rolls his eyes. "Use that brain of yours, Stiles. Who do you think wants you out of the way?"

"The nogitsune." If possible, the temperature drops twenty degrees. "The nogitune did this. But how? He's not like, a real life thing. I mean he is, but I thought he was possessing me. The nogitsune wouldn't put himself in a dungeon. How bored is this guy? I mean, come on."

Virgil scowls, mischievously. "I can explain. But you have to free me first."

"Wait, wait, wait! I just met you! For all I know this is happening in my head and you're the nogitsune! I can't trust you!" Stiles laughs.

"That is true. You can't. But I can help you and your friends if you let me go. That's all you care about anyway. Scott, Derek, Lydia. Your precious father. He wants them all dead, Stiles. He wants to see you suffer and he wants to see them burn. Now let me out or there is no hope."

"I don't know." Stiles turns away, searching in vain for another option that he knows he won't find. Stiles already made up his mind to let Virgil go free, but he just needs a moment. It's all coming so fast. The fact that nogitsune doesn't need his body anymore terrifies him. What is Stiles now? Leverage? The Nogitsune probably has a very solid, very tangible body now. Who would Virgil be other than the nogitsune? A professor, by the look of him. Stiles sighs.

"You're very lucky I can pick locks, Bueller."

"You're very reasonable." Virgil seems ready to cry with relief, sagging uselessly against the shackles. "Thank you."

At that moment, an eerie sort of lightning erupts from the mouth of the She-Wolf statue guarding the farthest door, splitting the air with a gunshot-like fizzle, and the stone of the statue begins to fracture like an eggshell, revealing ash gray fur and luminescent red eyes. A great, snarling beast fought to emerge from the casing, like a snake writhing against a rock to shed its old skin. Stiles and Virgil look on with slack jaws, nogitsune forgotten for now, and terror beating like a drum line in their chests as the She-Wolf fixes her eyes upon its prey.


End file.
